Does the Release note mention anything specific about the radar being switched off?
It's not clear to me from the screenshot or the article if they're really "turning off" radar even with this update.
Note that this was spotted, I'm told, in a newer Model S, so it's not clear the update will have the same effect in all vehicles, including radar-equipped ones.
The wording in that screenshotted release note is "...
certain autopilot and active safety features..." will use "Tesla Vision". That leaves open the possibility that radar may still be used for certain functions in vehicles that have it, such as automatic emergency braking (AEB), as an additional input. It's not entirely clear to me. Maybe they'll stop using it as a distance measurement in non-emergency situations? Dunno' yet.
Not sure how I feel about this. Don't like my car getting nerfed with lower AP speeds and greater following distance.
This sucks.
One of the reasons I've held onto my Feb 2021 built Y is because of radar. After almost two years and 24K miles, I have no problems with random phantom braking & love setting the following distance to 1.. as it keeps those aggressive DC commuters from jumping in front of me every 2 minutes.
I agree with both these sentiments (I'm also in DC area, by the way).
I have radar in my Model Y and was shocked when Tesla took out radar from new vehicles.
It never made sense to remove the radar, which Tesla almost certainly did for pandemic supply chain and cost reasons, regardless of what Musk claimed. Ever since then, they've been scrambling to get "vision only" to work well enough that it's sort of okay. However, it will never be as good as vision + radar + LIDAR, especially at night, and there's a TON of industry research on this.
But again, it's not entirely clear which vehicles that release note will apply to, or if it means they'll stop using radar in radar-equipped vehicles. We'll know more soon, I suspect.